


Sun Won't Stop

by LorraineMarker



Category: Battlestar Galactica (2003)
Genre: AU, M/M, Mild Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-04-23
Updated: 2011-04-23
Packaged: 2017-10-19 01:15:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 992
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/195258
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LorraineMarker/pseuds/LorraineMarker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Twenty-five years after Daybreak Saul Tigh reflects on what he still has.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sun Won't Stop

**Author's Note:**

> Music: [Sun Won't Stop](http://www.sendspace.com/file/selwjm), by Holly Near

Today was a rare late fall day when the brisk wind warning of oncoming snow waned to warm breezes. The entire village took advantage of the weather to spend a last lazy day before snow and ice overtook them again by the river. For a few hours, the sun reigned high and hot. Morning had already passed to noon hours before, and now the sun began its slow lazy tumble into night. Bright yellow turned gold and red, orange sparking along the edges. Wind picked up, once more bringing reminder and warning of winter.

Felix lay next to Saul, resting on cushions piled around them. A woven blanket, draped over him by one of the teenagers with nonchalant caring grace so typical of that age, protected him from the occasional reminding blast of wind. The remnants of their lunch, bread and cheese and fruit, lay scattered on a plate next to Felix.

Children's laughter filled the air. A loud splash and a giggled, "Sari, stop," brought swift parental admonishments, which did nothing to either stop the splash war or to prevent the children from noticing the Nick's poorly concealed mirth. Brendan's boy, Nick, lifted his youngest, Sammy from the riverbank, swinging him over the heads of his older sisters Sari and Nicole to hand to his wife Kacey.

"Brendan's a grandfather," Felix said with just as much wonder as he had six years before when Nick brought Sari to their hut to present to the village 'headman' and 'scribe'.

Saul hadn't expected to become the village's leader. It wasn't a job he had wanted, the rest appointed him by some sort of fiat when he wasn't in the room. One night he went to bed, plain Saul Tigh to sleep curled around Felix. The next morning, he woke up to a ring of faces waiting for him to tell them what to do. _Gods damned irritating_ he had thought at the time. He had spent the last twenty-five years trying to get off the hook and never quite managed to wriggle off.

He looked speculatively at Brendan. The man had lost his hair a decade ago. Sun and wind had beaten his skin to worn tan long before the last of his hair receded into memory. He sat with lazy grace leaning forward to greet his running granddaughters. His eyes sparkled over conspiratorial grins with the girls. Maybe he could finally sucker Brendan into taking on the headaches of 'headman.' No one could say he wasn't ready.

"It won't work," Felix whispered slyly.

Silver threaded through his curls and peppered his beard. At fifty-five, Felix no longer looked like Saul's decades younger lover; he looked like his contemporary. Cylons weren't flesh and bone; they didn't age. Whatever frakking around John had done to create the illusion of aging died with the Colony. After a decade worrying about leaving Felix alone, Saul had finally realized, barring accident, he would be the one left behind.

It didn't matter, Cylons didn't age, they just prepared for futures that came or didn't; but they did die. Not by illness or the entropy of time, they died by accident or purposeful destruction. They fell upon the cliff and shattered, stood in front of raging herds to be trampled underneath, were taken by flood or fire. Sometimes, they simply vanished into the wilderness walking to their rest when time passed too fast taking a human lover and leaving them alone. When it was time, Saul would do the same.

"No, I suppose not," Saul acknowledged.

Saul never saw sign that god or gods cared all that much for what they'd left behind after their creation. Still it suited him to consider overseeing the death of his children as punishment for hubris. Twenty-five years since the landing and the scattering, humanity survived, changed and growing. They had not destroyed it all, just very nearly. The Cylons too survived. Unchanged, untouched by time or entropy, nearly wholly infertile, with but a single child anchor their future. Hera Agathon passed swiftly from the world. She had lived, married, birthed children, and died in what seemed like a single breath. Now her daughters played with Nick and Kacey's daughters and son, and Hadrian's sons, and Lee's daughter and sons, and all the other children of the village. In a few generations, the little bit coding Hera passed to her daughters and they to their daughters would be all that remained of the Cylons.

 _Hubris to think we could make our children immortal.  
_  
A few feet away, Alexander sat, practicing his letters on a wood slate with a sharpened stick burned to blackened charcoal on one end. He squinted against the slowly setting sun. Teeth chewed on his lower lip in a way that reminded Saul vividly of his teacher.

"He's been around you too much." He leaned over, kissing Felix deeply. Twenty-five years later, this remained as sweet, as perfect as their first kiss. Too soon he'd be just a memory to Saul, one of many lost. He kissed him again. Deliberately he shaped his lips to smile against Felix's mouth. No reason for him to know Saul was moping. "Why is it that the village scribe gets an apprentice and the headman has to suck it up and deal?"

"Because the scribe is much, much smarter than the headman," Felix teased.

Another kiss, deeper and firmer, Felix squirmed in a way that boded well for tonight. There would be a Felix shaped hole in his life soon, but not yet, not today or even tomorrow. Today and tomorrow and the next day they would hold to each other, love each other.

"Pa Pa," Sari yelled for Brendan, "LOOK!" Everyone followed her finger up to the sun as it continued the march to evening. "Make it stop. I don't want this day to ever end."

"The sun won't stop, Sweetheart." Brendan told her. "Not for anyone."

"Not ever, Pa Pa?"

"Not ever."


End file.
